Magic of the Jack O'Lanterns

Last week the kids and I checked out a new to Colorado Halloween experience: Magic of the Jack O'Lanterns! 

Imagine 5,000 hand carved jack o'lanterns and pumpkin sculptures glowing in a beautifully lit garden setting as spooky music fills the air. Sounds like a Halloween dream, right? Well, it's a dream come true and you can experience it all at Magic of the Jack O'Lanterns. 

Magic of the Jack O'Lanterns makes it's Colorado debut this year at Hudson Gardens & Event Center in Littleton, just south of Denver. It's a wonderful family friendly event to add a little color and magic to the spooky season and definitely one you need to check out for yourself if you're in Colorado.

Let's take a look...

Halloween 2020

Happy Halloween!

Did you go out trick or treating last night or was it cancelled where you are? 

We dressed up and headed out trick or treating with our neighbors, but there weren't many houses taking part in our neighborhood. The kids didn't seem to mind too much though and had fun running around in their costumes collecting candy - although Ava did have trouble seeing through her mask once it got dark!

There's not an awful lot to show from our evening of trick or treating as it was dark by the time we headed out, but here's a look at the kids' costumes and our porch decorations.

Pumpkin Fun

Time for another Halloween catch up...

After our visit to Petaluma Pumpkin Patch we had lots of fun work ahead of us with our pumpkins. We carved jack-o'lanterns, roasted pumpkin seeds and made Mathilde and Sebastian pose inside of carved out pumpkins!

It was a beautiful day here so we spent the afternoon up on our roof carving pumpkins until the sun set. Here's a look at our pumpkin fun...

Our Pumpkin Patch Visit 2013

I love Autumn here in America. It's definitely my favourite season. 

With all of the beautiful trees ablaze with colour at this time of year Autumn is much more of a distinct season in the US than it is in Australia. Even here in northern California where it doesn't get all that cold, Autumn has a definite feel to it. In fact, here in the Bay Area early Autumn is actually the warmest part of the year with clear, sunny days and less fog than Summer. Although the days are warm the nights are starting to get chilly and the mornings can be quite crisp.

One of the main things I love about Autumn is the holidays. We've fully embraced Halloween and Thanksgiving since we moved to the US and the girls love getting into the spirit. Over the weekend we got into the holiday spirit by visiting a pumpkin patch to choose pumpkins for our Halloween jack-o'lanterns. We jumped in a Zipcar and headed east to Clayton Valley Pumpkin Farm.

Scary pumpkin!

Carving Pumpkins

It is now officially Halloween!

Ok, so it's 1am and the kids are tucked up fast asleep in bed so there won't be any celebrating Halloween for quite a few hours yet.

I've been meaning to share some of our Halloween preparations here on Little Hiccups but I've been so busy with said preparations that I haven't had the chance. Even as I'm typing this I still have to finish off my costume. Let's hope the sewing machine going in the early hours of the morning doesn't wake the kids in the next room!

So while I take a little break from the sewing machine, let's have a look at the jack-o'lanterns that we carved this year...

One of my jack-o'lanterns

Fall Harvest Time: Pumpkins

Less than 10 days until Halloween so it's time to get cracking with the preparations. The first thing on our list? Carving jack-o'lanterns! But before we can carve said jack-o'lanterns we needed to find the perfect pumpkins for the job.

Last year we arrived in America less than a week before Halloween. By the time we got over our jetlag and were somewhat settled in we had little time to go all out with the Halloween preparations. We made sure to carve jack-o'lanterns, however as we had left it so late we were left with the dregs of the season's pumpkins at our local supermarket. This year I was determined that we wouldn't let that happen again. We decided to get in a little earlier with the pumpkin selection and rather than just walking downstairs to our local Trader Joe's supermarket we hopped in a Zipcar and headed to the countryside. Dotted all around the countryside at this time of year are pumpkin patches. You don't need to travel very far out of an urban area to find them. In fact, there are even pumpkin patches within cities. I thought we'd go for the slightly more authentic option and get out of the city.

So on Saturday we headed to Petaluma, almost an hour north of San Francisco. Here we visited Petaluma Pumpkin Patch for our Fall harvest time fun. We started by selecting our pumpkins: Two medium sized pumpkins, three mini pumpkins and one swan gourd - a gourd that looks like, you guessed it, a swan!

Here's a look at our day of pumpkin fun!

Rolling pumpkins is easier than carrying them when you're little

Halloween Wrap Up

Well, I've been a little slack at keeping Little Hiccups up to date lately. Well, more than a little slack really. I had all these grandiose ideas about the fantastic blog entries I'd post one I arrived in the US and was no longer bogged down with work, but as usual life (i.e. two small children) has gotten in the way!

So in an effort to get back into it here's the second part of my Halloween post - the post-Halloween post, as it were!

After all the excitement during the lead up to the big day, our first ever Halloween lived up to the high expectations of Ava and I. Ok, so there was a minor setback when we discovered that the Halloween party we'd been planning to attend wasn't actually on but our evening of trick or treating more than made up for it.

I had originally decided that both Ava and Lola would be dressed as ladybugs for Halloween. I'd been coveting ladybug hoodies that I'd seen on Etsy for quite some time and Halloween seemed like the perfect excuse to go ahead and buy them for the girls. Ava was happy with the idea of matching ladybug costumes until we stepped foot inside a Halloween superstore. Once she saw the huge array of (much more exciting) costumes she just had to find her own costume. Many costumes were tried on: Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz, Supergirl, weird cat in a miniskirt... I was quite surprised however when Ava decided that her favorite costume was Cleopatra. The reason for my surprise was that it was also my favorite costume for her! That doesn't usually happen. I think the fact that a wig was involved made it a little more fun than some of the other costumes.

Boo! It's Halloween!

The girls and I arrived in San Francisco a few days ago just in time for our first ever Halloween.

Ava is so excited about Halloween (as am I!) and has been eager to get into the spirit of the season with decorations, costumes and pumpkins.

Today we had our first go at making jack-o'-lanterns. We chose two perfect little pumpkins so the girls could have one each.
Ava wanted to help out as much as possible but there's only so much a four year old can help when it comes to carving hard vegetables with a sharp knife! After I cut the top off the first pumpkin I gave Ava a spoon to start scooping out the seeds and stringy "pumpkin guts". Ava was revolted by what the inside of the pumpkin looked like, and apparently by the smell, so she gave up on this job pretty quickly!

Ava ready for pumpkin carving